SEX, TOLERANCE AND EDM

by Mooketsi Nthite / Images by Tenn iBair / 10.12.2014

Pam Andrews rocked up at the Channel O Africa Music Video Awards last Saturday in Jozi with her clit ring flashing. Her thin, transparent black gown revealed every inch of her sexy bod, except for floral patterns, which (barely) hid her nipples and flower… but there was no mistaking the piercing drawing everyone’s attention to the holy grail.

Then she turned around to show us her perfect booty which sported a cheeky tattoo on the left, no… right cheek, I think. That’s when my eyeballs fell out of their sockets. But I quickly picked them up and screwed them back into my skull just in time to call her over for an interview, where she admitted to being a nudist and said that she was looking forward to visiting the new nude beach in KZN.

Day made! I might as well have dropped my microphone and jetted home to spend the rest of my night alone, fantasizing about her clit ring.

As shocked and lustful as I was, most people were relatively mellow about it like ‘so what? Big deal bra.’ I guess I’m a typical conservative Pretorian catching up with the latest red carpet trends in the City of Gold.

Johannesburg is the entertainment nucleus of planet Africa. Before the CHOAMVAs we were at Space Ibiza 2014 in Newtown getting our brains rattled by giant industrial speakers, booming ear drum shattering EDM-like dub-step and rave courtesy of the hottest DJs from Europe and the US. The event was part of a world tour that hits up 25 cities around the globe, commemorating 25 years of Ibiza – that party island off the east coast of Spain.

But as we rocked our bodies like real ‘born frees’, I couldn’t help being aware of skin colour, since race-related violence is at the forefront of local and international news right now and I’d been involved in an argument at a club not so long ago.

The day before the CHOAMVAs/Ibiza jols, I was at Arcade Empire (a popular EDM club in Pretoria) and I narrowly avoided a parking lot fist fight with this rambling drunk douche bag racist after he kept on insinuating that Michael Brown, the black teen who got shot up with 12 bullets by a white cop in Ferguson, USA, deserved to die and the pig who did it deserved to walk free.

“You should be grateful you live in a white neighbourhood,” the arrogant kid told me.

When I tried reasoning with the guy (who turned out to be just out his teens and from the horse wagon dorpie of Witbank in Mpumalanga), he told me he WOULDN’T punch me in the face if I stopped interrupting him. Gee thanks boet!

I decided to let the kid be and walked away from the volatile situation before it escalated even more…

Later that weekend, I heard on the news that a white kid in Cape Town, same age as my boet at Arcade Empire, urinated on an old black man from the balcony of a ‘white’ nightclub called Tiger Tiger and tuned him, “I’m white, you’re black. I’m rich, you’re poor, so there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Born free?

Just like Arcade Empire and Tiger Tiger, Space Ibiza was overwhelmingly white, save for a few brown people like me curious to know why the entire world is consuming EDM like its some new designer drug. But unlike Arcade and Tiger, Space Ibiza took place in the heart of Jo’burg central, far away from the nearest white suburban laager, and it seemed like nobody gave a shit that brown people were in the crowd. They were lost in the music and too busy acting famous for the drone hovering above our heads, which was streaming live feeds to the big screen behind the DJs.

Jislaik, EDM raves are futuristic!

I interviewed Canadian house DJ and Brad Pitt lookalike Travis Guthrie plus Italian electro/house legend Congorock who shot to fame after dropping Babylon in 2010, making friends with them in the process. I felt totally accepted, comfourtable. Did they even notice I’m black? Nope.

EDM, like many other musical genres, has the potential to unite people of all races, and Johannesburg is Africa’s cosmopolitan melting pot.

Unfortunately, we could only spend a few hours at Space Ibiza before we had to rush to the CHOAMVAs, 15 minutes away at NASREC Expo Centre. We changed our clothes, dashed to the car in the parking lot, threw our bags in the boot and sparked a blunt before we departed…

***

It was my third time attending the CHOAMVAs and I feel last year’s awards in Kliptown, Soweto were much more fun and the stage design was way more elaborate. But there was a lot more sex magic on the red carpet this year, that’s for sure! Just take Denise Zimba for instance, who acts on resurrected soapy Generations. She wore a very similar black and transparent lace dress to Pam Andrews, major difference being that she wore a thong under hers… still, her bootylicious butt cheeks were exposed. She also didn’t mind that dozens of men were filming her behind and even taking selfies with her buttocks. Wow, Jozi girls sure have a lot of sass hey?

The awards were world class as always, honouring 90s kwaito pop group Boom Shaka with a lifetime achievement award, while hip hop star Cassper Nyovest from Mahikeng, North West and Diamond from Tanzania took the most awards – three each respectively. Cassper’s wins came as no surprise but Diamond shocked a lot of people who were expecting Nigerian heavyweight, Davido, to be one of the biggest winners… the Nigerian homeboy left with zero awards instead, ag shame.

Cassper’s song ‘Doc Shebeleza’ earned him a win in the Most Gifted Male, Most Gifted Southern and the Jameson Most Gifted Video of the Year categories.

The after party was at the snazzy Taboo nightclub in Sandton. But why pay ridiculous amounts for entrance and alcohol there, when there were about four open bars, free finger snacks being served on trays by waiters and hip hop DJs at the after party happening here? Nobody parties like Jo’burgers.

As sloshed and tired as I was when I fell on my bed that night, I didn’t go straight to sleep. I stared at the ceiling, comparing how I worked at a ‘white’ music festival listening to ‘white’ music for a couple of hours, then went straight to a ‘black’ awards show honouring ‘black’ music.

At Space Ibiza, nobody made me feel unwanted because I was a darkie at an EDM party and at the CHOAMVAs, nobody made Katja, my homegirl, feel out of place because she was a whitey at an African music award show.

Nowadays I turn on the news and see the ‘race war’ erupting between black and white Americans. I read the newspapers and see how spoiled brats from Cape Town’s suburbs are literally pissing, kicking, punching and insulting non-whites for no reason but the colour of their skin.

But when I go to music festivals and hipster areas in Jo’burg, I meet radical artists from all over SA, Africa and the world who are just as happy to meet me as I am to meet them. When I hit EDM clubs, the only colour that people notice are the light beams shooting out of the strobe lights, and maybe the rainbow coloured pills making rounds on the dance floors. It seems (in this part of the world at least), EDM unites the people, even if it’s only for the duration of the DJs’ sets, and Johannesburg is one of the last remaining bastions of racial tolerance where everyone can put aside their racial inhibitions and explore different peoples’ cultures fearing vuckall…